


breathe

by izzylizardborn



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: ? i guess? i dunno it's.. kinda sad and stuff?, Anxiety, But also, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Panic Attacks, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-10-01 06:22:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10182815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izzylizardborn/pseuds/izzylizardborn
Summary: Gansey has a panic attack. Noah helps.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is set before the raven boys, so gansey doesn't yet know that noah is a ghost! that being said, i think this fic is best enjoyed after reading the whole series--there's lots of little hints and foreshadowing. :')
> 
> also, warning: pretty intense panic attack below, including flashbacks to gansey's death (hornets, etc).

It was 6:12pm and Gansey couldn't breathe.

In three minutes, he had to be downstairs. Smile wide, chin up, tie knotted cleanly at his throat. Really, he should’ve already been downstairs, greeting at the door, shaking hands.

But he couldn’t get his hands to stop shaking. He couldn’t _breathe_.

Alone in a room that hadn’t felt like his in seven years, hornets hummed around his head, twitched in his hair, whizzed by his ears. The top button on his dress shirt pinched at his throat like stinging and swelling. The bead of sweat that crept between his shoulder blade was a hornet crawling down his spine, deliberating about which vertebrae were best to burrow between.

It was 6:13pm and Gansey couldn’t breathe. The sound of his heart, thready and wild, very nearly drowned out the sound of buzzing, but not quite, not enough. He begged himself to inhale, but his body wouldn’t let him, not when the air around him was saturated with hornets, not when they inched up his neck and over his cheeks. His vision speckled and darkened, clouds of insects blotting out the rays of the setting sun as it sank behind the trees.

 _No_ , he insisted. Tried. Pleaded. _Not the sun. The lamp on the bedside table._

He was in his bedroom. The hornets belonged to a different time, years before this moment. He _knew_ that. 

But it didn’t matter. Time had crumbled and somehow he was here and there, or there and here, and there were hornets all over him, and he couldn’t breathe. 

He clawed at the collar of his shirt, but his quaking fingers couldn’t make the button come undone; he clawed at his arms, but the feeling of his nails through the fine fabric of his shirt was nothing compared to the phantom stings, the swelling, the death. 

There was nothing to do but clap his hands over his ears and wait. Wait for the dying to be done. Wait for Glendower’s voice in his head, piercing through the sound of insects, realer than anything he’d ever heard. 

In reality, it must’ve been quick. But in his memories, it was millennia. 

It was 6:14pm and Gansey couldn't breathe. It was 6:15pm and Gansey couldn't breathe. It was 6:16pm and Gansey couldn’t breathe. 

At some point, he’d ended up on the floor. He hadn’t remembered falling or curling up, but there he was, so he must’ve. His cheek was slick against the hardwood floor, but it wasn’t enough. He could smell heat-warmed soil and rich Virginia pine and humidity; he could feel soft earth and tree roots. 

It was 6:17pm and Helen knocked on his door. “Hurry,” she said, “You’ll miss champagne.” His heart seized and worked double, triple. He struggled to speak, if for no reason other than to keep her from coming in and seeing him like this, but he couldn’t speak if he couldn’t breathe, and he couldn’t breathe. 

In some miniscule mercy, she didn’t come in. She delivered her message and on she went, penciling into her schedule only enough time for a 10-second trip down the hallway, one swift knock, and nothing more.

It was 6:18pm and Gansey couldn’t breathe. It was 6:19pm and Gansey couldn’t breathe. 

It was 6:20pm and Gansey thought he might not ever breathe again. Maybe Glendower had tired of saving him. 

_You took too long_ , Glendower said. He was sad about it. Gansey was a failure. _You had your chance._

 _I tried_ , Gansey pleaded in return. _I tried to find you. I just need more time._

It was 6:21pm and Noah was there.

Had Noah been there the entire time? He couldn’t have been. He’d come alone, hadn’t he?

He couldn't remember, or he couldn’t think, or it didn't matter. Noah was here, and he was laying Gansey’s head in his lap. 

“It’s okay,” Noah said, pushing his frigid fingers through Gansey’s hair. “There’s nothing there.” He spoke so softly that Gansey surely couldn’t hear him—the words sounded like they were in his head instead of out loud, somehow reaching through the sound of his heartbeat and the horrible crawl of hornets into his skull. 

He wanted to tell Noah to go before the hornets got him too, but his tongue was swollen beyond use. 

His panic increased. Noah shouldn’t die for him.

“Nothing there,” Noah repeated again, dabbing at Gansey’s forehead with the soft cotton edge of his Aglionby sweater, resting his cold hands against the pulse of his throat. Carefully, he undid the suffocating top button of Gansey’s shirt. 

Gansey gasped in relief. It wasn’t breathing, but it was something, some leeway as his chest heaved with the trying of it. 

Cool air—Noah’s hands?—pressed firmly against his cheeks, his forehead, his neck. Not the light dusting of insect legs or the sticky spring heat, but cool, steady pressure, anchoring him to his body. 

_Nothing there. Nothing there._

“Here,” Noah said, easing Gansey’s hands away from his ears. He puffed his cheeks out and firmly blew the hornets away from one side of his head and then the other. 

The puff of air was startlingly real against the sounds of hornets, making Gansey flinch in a way that deviated from the dying.

“See?” Noah said. Impossibly, he was smiling, just a little, just comforting. “Nothing there.” 

Nothing there. Noah was right. There was nothing at all, except Noah—calm and soothing, cradling his head in his lap, gently working his fingers through his hair again, breathing in and breathing out and breathing in and breathing out. 

“Can you sit up?” Noah asked. 

Gansey still couldn’t speak. He must’ve been breathing, now, at least somewhat, because the world was clearer than before, but still his words seemed far away. He gave the slightest nod instead, feeling stiff like a corpse. 

Oh god. He _died_.

“You’re okay,” Noah assured immediately. “Just tension. Just tired.” He smoothed his hands over Gansey’s shoulders and helped him right himself, and as the world went vertical again, Gansey felt reality crash back over him. 

He was collapsed on the floor of his childhood bedroom, hallucinating hornets and pantomiming his death, while his family ushered in guests not ten feet below him. The humiliation of it almost made him sick. 

“It’s okay,” Noah said, taking Gansey’s clammy hands. “You’re okay. Nobody has to know.” 

Gansey wanted to say _But you know_ , but as he fought to find his voice, he realized that he was far more grateful for Noah’s presence than embarrassed by it. If anyone had to see him like this, Noah was the preferred option, if only because the novelty had worn off after the first dozen times. Usually, it was after nightmares; usually, it could be cured with an hour spent working on mini Henrietta; usually, it wasn’t this bad. But in its essence, panic was panic, and Noah had witnessed enough of it to know how to help. 

Even as Gansey recognized it—flashbacks, panic attacks, nothing new—his skin still crawled. Upright now, with Noah as a distraction, he could almost pretend he didn’t feel it.

“Don’t talk,” Noah advised, “Just breathe.” Sitting directly across from him, he held one of Gansey’s hands against his chest. Gansey watched his hand rise and fall as Noah made an exaggerated show of pulling air in and out of his lungs.

Gansey curled his fingers into the fabric of Noah’s sweater, the texture familiar under his palm. He tried to count along with the breaths, but his brain skittered out from under him, still struggling to find purchase in reality. 

Noah exhaled, and Gansey felt it faintly on his cheeks, pushing hornets off his skin again. It made his own exhale—shaky, hiccupped—look pathetic by comparison. 

Still, Noah gave a supportive, “Yeah,” and coached him through it again. 

As Noah taught Gansey how to breathe, Gansey let his eyes close so he could focus. Focus on the predictable motion of Noah’s chest, the movement of the empty air, the prickle of warmth behind his eyelids as he realized he was about to cry. 

Noah acknowledged it only as he thumbed away Gansey’s tears. 

It was 6:29pm before Gansey could breathe on his own again, and the thought of his family coming to find him in this state threatened his eggshell calm. “I—“ he said, and his voice crackled, and he wanted to cry all over again, “—I have to get downstairs.”

Noah nodded, got to his feet, and then pulled Gansey up to his. He kept his hand on Gansey’s arm until he got his feet under him, until he wasn’t at risk of collapsing again.

“I need to change,” Gansey said. He didn’t need a mirror to know he didn’t look presentable. He could feel that his skin was blotchy, that his hair was sticking every which way, that his shirt was clinging to the sweat that had pooled all over him. 

“Should I… go?” Noah asked, and Gansey shook his head so immediately that the world spun again. 

He steadied himself on the bedpost. “No. Can you…” He nodded toward the closet, and Noah rifled through it, taking a minute to select a clean shirt and a tie to match. 

“Good?” Noah asked, holding it up to himself to get Gansey’s approval. 

Gansey gave a weak nod. In the time it had taken for Noah to plan him an outfit, he had succeeded in undoing exactly one button on his shirt. He was still shaky; his dexterity was shot.

Noah wordlessly undid the rest of his buttons for him, and Gansey let his hands fall uselessly to his sides. He was too preemptively embarrassed about arriving late to dinner to be embarrassed now about the fact that he needed Noah to undress him.

Goosebumps prickled on his skin as open air reached his chest, as Noah unbuttoned the last of his buttons. 

He looked down at himself. No stings, no bugs. _Nothing there._

He shrugged off the shirt, letting it fall to the ground in a heap, and then slipped on the clean one. These buttons posed the same difficulty in reverse, so Noah helped redress him, too. 

He watched Noah’s fingers as they worked buttons into corresponding holes, starting at the bottom and moving up, and then he watched Noah’s face—his eyes narrowed with focus, biting his lip at the corner like this simple task required immense amounts of concentration.

He got to the top button and Noah looked up to find Gansey already looking back at him. Inexplicably, Gansey felt like he’d been caught doing something illicit, like Noah was the one being vulnerable here, but Noah just asked, “Is this okay?”

Gansey nodded and lifted his chin just a little as Noah secured the top button tight against his throat. He let out another ragged breath and Noah returned it with a steady one. 

Noah put his hand on Gansey’s chin, angling his head down so he could easily rope the tie around his neck. “How are you so cold?” Gansey murmured.

“I’ve been dead for seven years,” he said.

Gansey couldn’t help the weak little laugh that snaked out between uneven breaths. That old line again. 

“And also you’re burning up. So. Comparatively.”

That much was true. The panic attack was over, but the anxiety remained. Exhaustion pulled at his muscles, slumping his shoulders, urging him toward his bed. His eyes stung from tears that still desperately wanted to fall. He was emptied out of everything—his thoughts and feelings were failing him, leaving only the raw wound of sensation. The sound of chatter and laughter from downstairs seemed closer than it should’ve. The slanted, dull light from the lamp on his desk was uncharacteristically blinding. His skin was still hot—his heart was still hot.

He needed Noah, muted and cold, to extinguish the last of him. Gently, he brought one of Noah’s hands to his cheek, sinking into the cool of it, like pressing his skin against marble. 

It wasn’t enough. 

Silently, he rested his forehead against Noah’s. 

Noah didn’t move, didn’t breathe, and then he did, and Gansey felt the cool of it over his cheeks, chilled air settling in his chest like a healing salve. Goosebumps mapped his skin again and he sighed, just a little. His heart was beating hard, but not erratically like before, and he was aware of it all at once—aware of it like he was aware of Noah’s breath on his lips and in his lungs, like it was the realest thing he’d ever felt. 

He let his eyes close, let himself sink into the feeling of Noah’s impossible cold, Noah’s impossible calm. The places where they touched still felt hot, but they were growing cooler. 

Gansey wasn’t sure how long they stood there like there—nose-to-nose, Noah breathing for him. All he knew was that it was helping. All he knew was that, eventually, he was standing there because he wanted to be, not because he needed to be. He could feel himself again, the whole of him, here and now, but he still couldn’t bear to pull away.

He knew he had to thank Noah, but words were hard to find when they were sharing breath. 

As soon as he thought it, he felt Noah’s thumb shift across his cheekbone, his fingers curl ever-so-slightly behind his ear. A permission, an invitation, to speak without words. 

Gansey couldn’t think about it, couldn’t hesitate. He shifted his chin—an inch, less, a centimeter, a breath—and closed the space between them. 

It was feather-light, the ghost of a kiss. With impossible softness, Noah kissed him back. 

Gansey knew it couldn’t have been long that they stood there like that, sharing that comforting kiss, but time stretched into something gentler, allowing Gansey to sink into it all—the relief, the peace, the niceness of it. His appreciation for Noah’s kind companionship bled out of him, affection crashing into him with the strength of a tidal wave, wavering at his knees, dizzying him.

Only with Noah’s help did he stay standing. 

Delicately, Noah pulled back. Sounding humored, he suggested, “Breathe.”

Gansey would’ve preferred kissing to breathing, but he took a breath anyway, and the world regained equilibrium. “Thanks,” he said, for the reminder, for the help, for the kiss, for everything, not just this time but every time.

Noah gave a puppy grin that said ‘Of course’ and lopsided shrug that said ‘No problem’ and then took to fussing over Gansey’s hair, smoothing it into a more suitable shape. “You have to go downstairs now,” he said, which was exactly what Gansey was also thinking. 

“I know,” he said, letting his head drop to rest against Noah’s shoulder, savoring this last moment of safety and vulnerability before he had to go downstairs and be his father’s son. 

Noah looped his arms around Gansey’s shoulders, holding him tight, until Gansey had the strength to step away. 

He scrubbed his hands over his face and palmed his cufflinks off the dresser. Although he could do them himself now, Noah helped him anyway. 

With a deep, slow breath, he crossed to the door, squaring his shoulders and preparing to step into a world where he wasn’t haunted by his death. Noah made no move to follow him. 

Gansey felt himself frown. “Aren’t you coming?” he asked.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” Noah said. He said ‘here’ like he was referring to something bigger than the Gansey estate—he said it so oddly that Gansey wasn’t sure what to say in return. 

“Well,” he said after a moment, clearing his throat, skating his thumb over his bottom lip as it curled into a tired smile, “I’m glad you are.”

Noah smiled back, touching at his cheek and his splotchy birthmark and then at his lips. Backlit in the dim room, he looked barely there, but his voice was clear and happy when he agreed, “Yeah, me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading and i hope that you enjoyed it! ❤️
> 
> any comments or feedback are always super appreciated!! it always means so much to me to hear what you thought! :')
> 
> come cry about the raven kids with me on tumblr at [@gaybluesargent](http://gaybluesargent.tumblr.com/)!  
> (this fic is rebloggable [here](http://gaybluesargent.tumblr.com/post/158169106746/breathe)!)


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